Horse's Colour Vision HELP

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hazel23

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Hello,
I am currently in my third year of an equine studies degree and for my dissertation am looking into the colour vision of horses.
Have you (or anyone you know) ever had any issues with horses that you have put down to the colours around them? Maybe issues when using coloured poles, refusing to eat/drink from coloured buckets or spooking at coloured things out hacking?
Any stories you can tell would be greatly appreciated as background information.
Thanks
 
OH mare is a real stickler for having everything the same! We took her for a day away to see a specialist recently and since it was a long journey she had some chill out time in a stable when we got there. She had a fresh bucket of water too. The bucket was yellow (she has a yellow bucket and a blue bucket at home, but when away from home she only has a blue bucket). She kept putting her head to it, then turning away again. OH poured the water from the yellow bucket into the blue bucket and she tucked in straight away and drank her fill. No taint from the yellow bucket or reason not to use it, just the wrong colour it seems!
 
My hunter will stop if any horse in front of him which carries a rider in a red coat stops, but go galloping past any horse with a rider in a dark coat. I am absolutely certain he has learnt that we never pass the Field Master, and that anyone else in a red coat gets priority at fences, so will never pass anyone in a red coat without pausing to think about it.

It helped me a few weeks ago when I had him in the wrong bit. He bolted and had already passed several members of the field in dark coats. A joint-master in front of me realised I had a problem and pulled up to give me priority at the hunt fence if I needed it. My horse, who until then was blindly charging along refusing to turn or slow down, checked momentarily and gave me the instant that I needed to pull him round in a circle and eventually stop.

I have been monitoring him on the two hunts since and he definitely behaves differently behind a red coated rider than a dark coated rider.
 
Our NF knows the colour of food bowls - he used to be fed from a blue tub trug. One day were are at some else's yard for a lesson, he'd been there before, but not been fed there only been for riding. A girl was wandering past the stable blocks, a good 20ft away with a pink tub trug which she went and filled with water and brought back, and he completely ignored this. She came back later with a blue one, it was only an empty trug, that had contained water, so no smell associated, and his head and ears shot up as soon as he spotted it, he got agitated and started pawing the ground impatiently just as he does when a blue trug appears at home, thinking it was food. He'd not met this girl before, she didn't interact with him in any way, and he didn't know what was (or wasn't) in the trugs.
 
cptrayes said:
My hunter will stop if any horse in front of him which carries a rider in a red coat stops, but go galloping past any horse with a rider in a dark coat. I am absolutely certain he has learnt that we never pass the Field Master, and that anyone else in a red coat gets priority at fences, so will never pass anyone in a red coat without pausing to think about it.

It helped me a few weeks ago when I had him in the wrong bit. He bolted and had already passed several members of the field in dark coats. A joint-master in front of me realised I had a problem and pulled up to give me priority at the hunt fence if I needed it. My horse, who until then was blindly charging along refusing to turn or slow down, checked momentarily and gave me the instant that I needed to pull him round in a circle and eventually stop.

I have been monitoring him on the two hunts since and he definitely behaves differently behind a red coated rider than a dark coated rider.
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Very weird as horses can't 'see' red!
 
My boy will ONLY drink out of a blue bucket when in the stable.

and my 2 y/o doest seem to like walking over any coloured polls, apart from the yellow one - she doesn't even look twice at it.
 
Faracat said:
Very weird as horses can't 'see' red!
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I don't know that he sees "red" but he certainly sees the difference between black/dark blue and red. If they really can't see red, then I would guess that it is a particular density of grey which he knows is the "colour" that we stop for.
 
Brackenhurst Equestrian Centre have already done a study on this. I believe the study can be found on their website or possibly even google. Title of it is "An investigation into the effect of floor colour on the behaviour of the horse" and it is written by Carol Ann Hall and Helen Joan Cassaday
 
thanks everyone, all very helpful, keep it coming!

youngfarmer thanks yes i have read their paper

Faracat said:
Very weird as horses can't 'see' red!
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there are lots of tales of horses being able to 'see' (or not see) a variety of colours and there have been lots of studies on it however few of the findings seem to agree - hence the interest for my dissertation!
 
No problem. I know a few students at Brackenhurst have also done studies using t-shirts in different colours etc.

Coloured poles (sorry not sure who mentioned it above!) is slightly different though. Horses tend to struggle more over brightly or multi coloured poles, as certain colours reflect light differently and therefore the horse sees everything at different levels. A very good reason why show jumps at higher levels tends to be very bright and colourful!
 
My older gelding is scared of white things. White signs, white flowers, white markings on the road etc. Have a red saddle pad and a turquoise saddle pad, a QH gelding I owned used to always pick up the turquoise one to play with, never the red one. I rode him with either so it couldn't have been which one smelled of him.
 
When I introduced my boy to trotting poles, he was fine over the blue and yellow ones and terrified of the red, black and white ones so there may be something in the brighter colours theory. Friend's old mare is also terrified of white things, particularly flowers! Steady as a rock generally but will throw a massive spook at white flowers!
 
I'm told some stallions refuse to serve mares of a particular colour. No problem with my stallion, though!:D Might be worth investigating though.
 
Big hairy HATES purple/pink flowers when stuck in jumps or on a hack etc, yet when i bought some fake flowers in various colours and stuck them at the end of our schooling area to get him used to them he totally ignored them:rolleyes::D
 
Faracat said:
Very weird as horses can't 'see' red!
Click to expand...
Horses can indeed see red (though probably not as the same colour as we see when we see red, if you know what I mean) in the sense that they can tell the difference between red and grey of the same brightness. It's bluey-green they have difficulty with because that colour is halfway between the peaks of the two colour receptor types that they have, in common with many other mammals - although we humans have three colour receptor types and birds can have four or even five.
 
Horses are dichromic rather than trichromic, the colour that is missing is red (they have no cones that are sensitive to the red light wavelength).

However thay have far better black and white vision than us and also have a tapetum (like cats do), giving them excellent low light vision. I read a wonderful book, where the author tested this by show jumping at night. Apparently she found it scary as hell, but the horse had no trouble seeing and clearing the jumps. ;)
 
Faracat said:
Horses are dichromic rather than trichromic, the colour that is missing is red (they have no cones that are sensitive to the red light wavelength).
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You're right about horses have two cone types (as opposed to normal humans' three), but the colour that is "missing" - the hardest to discriminate from grey - is at the so-called dichromatic neutral point. For horses, this is a bluey-green (or greeny-blue). Because the longer wavelength cones of horses are sensitive to shades of red (although less than to green), they are able to discriminate red from grey, i.e. they see it as "coloured". However, purply red appears to be harder to discriminate, though still not as hard as blue-green.

Another person who has studied this as an amateur horseowner rather than a professional scientist is Carol Owen, MBE. Her study had a particularly elegant design which got round the need for expensive equipment to measure reflectance spectra. However, the results of this study were in agreement with previous scientific publications.
 
Dubsie said:
Our NF knows the colour of food bowls - he used to be fed from a blue tub trug. One day were are at some else's yard for a lesson, he'd been there before, but not been fed there only been for riding. A girl was wandering past the stable blocks, a good 20ft away with a pink tub trug which she went and filled with water and brought back, and he completely ignored this. She came back later with a blue one, it was only an empty trug, that had contained water, so no smell associated, and his head and ears shot up as soon as he spotted it, he got agitated and started pawing the ground impatiently just as he does when a blue trug appears at home, thinking it was food. He'd not met this girl before, she didn't interact with him in any way, and he didn't know what was (or wasn't) in the trugs.
Click to expand...

My cobby knows the colour of the bowls and will NOT eat from the blue bowl,he prefers the purple one. lol
 
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